Suggestion
by Forgotten Ramblings
Summary: The Doctor and Martha, right after the events of Family of Blood.
1. Chapter 1

She intended to say nothing about it ever.

She intended to say nothing about it ever. Martha stood in the control room and repeated the thought over and over in her head.

'So then! Where to?" The Doctor's voice rang in the large room, tinny and somehow at odds with his manic energy.

"Dunno." Martha shrugged, tucking her hands into her sides. "Wherever you like."

The Doctor paused mid-bounce, looking mortally insulted. "Oh, come on, Martha Jones! Where's the interest, the enthusiasm, eh?"

Martha shrugged again, looking down at the floor. Somehow she wasn't in the mood for all his frantic energy. "I dunno," she repeated. "'M a bit tired, actually. Might go to bed."

He pauses, sinking onto his heels, losing his forward momentum. It's his turn to look down, hands wandering over the TARDIS controls. "Alright then," he says, his tone abruptly quiet.

Now she's worried him. Half-guilty, half-annoyed, she looks up, musters a smile. "I'm alright, really," she reassures, answering his unasked question. "Just tired. It's been a really long three months. We can go somewhere tomorrow, yeah?"

Martha leaves before he can say anything, glad to escape the atmosphere, the undercurrents in the room. She relaxes, degree by degree, as she walks, and it is now that she realizes that she has grown to cherish privacy.

_Well, who wouldn't,_ she thinks, with a mental snort. _After three months of sharing a room with five girls_. Albeit in the darkest, dampest corner of it, with the thinnest mattress and the smallest blanket. She was looking forward to the large bathtub and soft eiderdown of her room in the TARDIS.

She was at her door; out of enforced habit, Martha slid the door open a crack and slid through, ending up in the room, facing the door again. She paused for a second, resting her head on the grainy texture of it; she could smell her perfume, the lingering traces, and was suddenly, fiercely grateful for her small sanctuary, there in the midst of all the madness.

Then she turned around.

There was a large, empty square of space where her four-poster bed had previously stood, the curtain hangings tangled in a haphazard bunch on the floor. Martha stared, mouth agape, then stiffened as realization hit her.

"Oh, nonononono."

Martha dashed to her bathroom door and wrenched it open. And swore, using every bad word she'd picked up since traveling with the Doctor. The space pirate she'd met on Tirene 3 would have been so proud, a distant recess of her mind thought, calm in the face of disaster.

Her decadently large, comfortably deep, sink-into- and-_relax _bathtub_, _that the TARDIS had so generously given her, and that she'd been fantasizing about, with increasing intensity, for the last half-hour, had disappeared.

As had her bed.

And her towel rack.

The towel rack did it. Abandoning all though of asking the Doctor to talk to the TARDIS for her, Martha fisted her hands on her hips and glared up at the ceiling.

"I'm tired and filthy and smell like 1913 – which was not a good year for soap, by the way – and all I wanna do is drown myself in my bathtub and then sleep for a week, so _please_, give me back my bathtub. And my bed. And…the towel rack."

No answer.

"'S like talking to God," Martha muttered. "Right. If you won't give me back, I'm gonna…oh, how do you fight an alien object?" All of a sudden, she was close to tears. It _had _been a long three months, she'd said something she'd promised she'd never say out loud in front of the person it had been about and she was pretty sure the Doctor had heard her, and now the TARDIS was being mean.

All of a sudden Martha could feel her, a presence, like her consciousness was suddenly made up of two people instead of one; her mind occupied by a completely alien being.

That was sighing, in an all too recognizable way.

Talk to him

Martha looked down. Her current plan regarding the Doctor involved avoidance and not much else.

"I'd rather not."

Talk to him

Martha remembered what she'd done, what she'd said, and felt her cheeks flush with an emotion she couldn't name.

"I'd really rather not.

A pause.

Then, sounding entirely too human;

_You will get your bathtub back. _

Martha looked up quickly, suddenly feeling a little crafty and a lot hopeful. "You know, I'd be in a much better mood for talking if I could have a bubble bath _first-"_

Another sigh, this one as world-weary and tiredly amused as the Doctor himself.

Talk first

Rebervated that voice, through all the hollows and caverns of her head; a sentence that was somehow more than just a statement.

Martha stood for a second, stubborn, but felt her will buckle. With a sound that was half-shriek, half scream, strangling in her throat, she slammed out the door, looking – albeit unwillingly for the Doctor.


	2. Chapter 2

He'd obviously been looking for her; he stood, arm outstretched, his fist a hair's breadth away from where her door had just been. "Oh, hello," he said, not looking at all perturbed by its sudden disappearance. "Can we talk?"

Martha looked at him, then up, then at him again. "Is this some kind of joke?" she demanded, clinging to patience and reason with her last remaining fingernail. "Have the two of you been planning something?"

The Doctor leant forwards, eyebrows rising. "Us who?"

The fingernail cracked; Martha could almost see the jagged shards spinning off in opposite directions. "You know who!" she sputtered, at the end of her tether. "I thought you'd been through the wringer, but obviously Time Lords must bounce back a lot faster than us primitive humans, because I don't need this right now, Doctor! I don't," she repeated, at once trying to stay calm and _needing _ him to understand.

It wasn't working; he was staring at her bemusedly, mouth half-open. "I don't, she said again, rather inanely, and shut the door in his face.

Martha spun on her heel and strode to the center of her room, plopping her but down in the center of the space where her beloved bed had previously stood. She sat for a minute, cross-legged, hands on knees, then lay back, kicking her legs out on the gleaming wooden floor. She stared at the blank face of the ceiling, lacing her hands beneath her head. Forget about blankets and beds and such semantics; this was what she needed, regardless of context; sleep, healing, mindless sleep, that would give her the courage to step outside her door tomorrow morning.

Somewhere along the way she'd shut her eyes; Martha frowned as the comforting grey of her room was transformed, replaced with the soft red glow of light permeating a thin layer of flesh.

Martha sat up, disbelieving.

The Doctor stood in her doorway, bathed in the corridor's light, twirling a ring of keys on his index finger.

"Hullo."


	3. Chapter 3

Next chapter! sorry it took so long to upload, but school has been rather frantic lately, even though all our exams are _next _term, which does not bode well. However, it's up, and I apologise for the delay. I have noticed these are rather short...i'll try to make them longer, but, again, all depends on the elusive presence of my muse. Enjoy!

Chapter Three

Martha scrambled to her feet, furious. "I don't believe this!"

"Now, just hold on," the Doctor said, backing away with his hands up. "Before we do anything rash-"

"Oh, so you _breaking into my room _isn't rash?"

"Martha-"

"I don't _believe _this, Doctor! I know, the TARDIS is yours, and she's your baby, and must not be harmed in any way, shape or form, but this is _my _space! And I need you to respect that, not blatantly ignore it! I mean-"

She was well and truly into it now, the Doctor thought wryly, tucking his hands into his coat pockets. Serve him right for tangling with a Jones in a mood. He rocked back on his heels, schooling his face into whichever expression he thought most appropriate for her tone of voice. She used her hands a lot when she spoke, he noticed, twitching his brows into 'repentant'.

She looked just like her mother, he thought absently, amused, and could have kicked himself. Just when the thought he was getting over her, _moving on, _he'd be reminded again. Oh, he had a type alright, he thought bitterly, looking down at the floor. Smart, funny, sarcastic when they wanted to be – little, trivial, unimportant things that kept hitting him in the face when all he wanted to do was forget.

She had to by done by now, the Doctor thought, rotating his jaw ('penitent' had been harder than he'd thought it'd be). She couldn't possibly still be shouting.

She wasn't; when he peeked up, she was glaring at him; arms crossed over her chest, hip cocked, foot tapping. Glaring.

Laser beams, the Doctor thought, and swallowed inwardly. Here went nothing.

"You finished?"

Silence.

"I mean, you sound finished. Got that whole glowery thing going on, which, Martha Jones, could be good for you. Well, not for your skin, obviously, because any movement at all is bad for your skin really. But, what're you gonna do? Can't go around not moving _anything. _Well. Obviously you could, because I know a race that does- lovely people, the Floouvians. Great-"

"Doctor."

The Doctor froze, eyebrows mid-action.

"Yes?"

"What. Do. You. Want?"


	4. Chapter 4

Stillness.

Martha waited, resisting the urge to go check if the man standing in front of her was a statue. She'd never seen anyone freeze so completely into absolute stillness before; there was something vaguely unnerving about it, as if he could have been standing there for centuries, distant and coolly observing, instead of mere seconds.

"Doctor?"

No answer.

"What do you want?"

The words came out whispered, tired, defeated, and Martha winced, dropping her eyes downwards. All that time she'd been standing outside that room, containing the Doctor and a woman who'd had something together that she would never, _never _have, she'd been vowing to herself that she'd be sensible. She'd be smart, competent, utterly independent, and by doing that she would make sure that the Doctor never knew how badly she'd fallen, how far she'd slid down that slippery slope that ended in the sticky mush of helpless, unrequited love. She'd repeated it over and over in her head on the way to the TARDIS, had ordered herself to stand straight and tall and not give in completely when he had lurched into her arms on the TARDIS steps, smelling of grass and rain and freshly turned earth.

And now she'd said something that made her sound like she was pathetic and young. And, worse of all…yearning.

But they'd done the trick. His shoulders slumped and he sighed, expression morphing from cheerful to downcast in a split second. Wrinkles, Martha thought, darkly amused. If he lived long enough, he'd have them by the dozen.

"Martha…" He looked older, she realised, standing there in the corridor, face lit by the soft yellow glow of the lighting. No, he didn't have many wrinkles – but all of a sudden the lines on his face looked etched, worked deep into the fabric of his skin; the story of his life, traced on the surface of his being. .

"I didn't _want _anything. I came to ask…if you were okay."

Martha could actually feel the sympathy leaving her body.

"You stole my bed, my bath AND my towel rack_, _to see if I was_ okay?"_

"Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa," said the Doctor, backing away with his hands up. "Why would I steal your towel rack?"

"I don't know, Doctor! Maybe to get me to actually talk to you when all I want is to go to _sleep!"_

"But I have a very nice towel rack, it's carved- "

"_It's not about the towel rack, Doctor!" _Martha could feel the tears building, insistent pressure in the corner of her eyelids, intent on forcing their way through the thin barrier of blood and skin. "The TARDIS is your sanctuary; didn't you think that maybe I don't have mine anymore? That this is what I'm making do with? When you come barging in here, you are _violating my space, _Doctor!

Martha paused, breathing hard, cheeks flushed, trembling. She didn't lose control like this often, and when she did it was rare enough that she was always surprised before being embarrassed.

"I'm sorry," she mumbled, feeling her cheeks grow redder with shame. "I didn't mean to shout- "

"Yes you did," the Doctor said, amusement curling the corner of his mouth and arching his eyebrow. "I may not seem to know women, Martha Jones, but when someone lets it rip like that, they mean what they say."

Martha looked down again, this time to hide a smile. "Okay, I did," she agreed, nodding. She looked up, gaze clear and direct. "But I meant everything I said."


	5. Chapter 5

The Doctor's face went from amused to concerned in a second. Again, Martha was reminded forcibly of a chameleon. "Did you not just say that?" he asked.

"Say what?" Martha asked, resigned. With the Doctor, there were no straight lines.

"Say that you meant it. I'm sure you did."

"Say that I meant it? Doctor, what-"

He cut over her, talking fast. "You said you didn't mean to shout at me, and I said you did, and then you cocked your eyebrow and said I meant it all over again. Are you feeling okay?"

Slightly stunned at the machine-gun delivery, Martha only blinked. "Am I – what?"

Now the Doctor was circling her, stepping in quick, direct movements, his gaze moving, searching for any sign of abnormality in her body. Martha turned with him, feeling ridiculously exposed. His glasses, she noticed, had been fished from the depths of a voluminous pocket and were now perched precariously on his nose, wobbling slightly.

"Doctor, -" she tried again, as long hands started probing delicately at the glands in her neck. "Doctor, I'm fine – ".

"…known something like this was going to happen," he was muttering under his breath, ignoring her completely. "Out there for three months, with all that dirt and grass and _sheep_ – a singularly useless animal, sheep, and thick as a boot to go with it – with no form of hygiene, you humans are so slow when it comes to evolving. A _ridiculous _year for soap, something like a hundred bars sold for all of England. I'd be surprised if you _hadn't _been sick, did you get thinner?" he asked suddenly, looking up, eyes squinched in concentration.

Martha focused on controlling her urge to laugh. "Ah, Doctor," she said, mouth twitching helplessly. "Your glasses-" "Martha, this is important. If you've lost weight, or developed a rash, or had_ anything _change with your body, you need to tell me. Now."

He was staring at her, eyes dark and intense behind his glasses, hands resting gently on the sides of her neck, her face cupped within his thumbs. Martha struggled not to blush, hating herself for the warmth spreading over her face. "Doctor, I'm fine," she said shortly, embarrassment making her abrupt. "You don't need to worry about me." Not giving him time to react, she slipped out of his grasp, and back into her room, the door snicking shut behind her.

Left alone in the corridor, the Doctor slid his hands into his pockets, sighing as he did so. "Ah, but that's the problem, Martha Jones," he said softly. "I do." He turned as if to go, and then looked up, brow wrinkling in momentary peturbance. "Oh, and give her her towel rack back, will you?"


End file.
